Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (ITV)

İctimai Televiziya, literally Public Television and commonly known as İTV, is Azerbaijan’s statutory public-service broadcaster. Television broadcasting began on 29 August 2005, followed by İctimai Radio in January 2006. The broadcaster was established under the Law on Public Television and Radio Broadcasting of 28 September 2004 to implement a commitment Azerbaijan made when joining the Council of Europe in 2001. İTV joined the European Broadcasting Union in 2007 and has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 2008. Balakishi Gasimov has served as Director General since June 2018 and was elected to a further four-year term in May 2026.

Media assets

Television: İctimai Television

Radio: İctimai Radio

Ownership and governance

İTV is established by law as an independent public-service legal entity rather than as an ordinary government-owned company. Under the Law on Public Television and Radio Broadcasting, it owns, uses and disposes of its property, which may not be privatised or pledged, and determines the form and content of its programming independently.

The broadcaster is governed by a nine-member Broadcasting Council. The President does not appoint its members. Article 17 provides that nine specified professional and civil-society constituencies, including trade unions, the Academy of Sciences, the Press Council, business, youth and women’s organisations, sports federations, religious denominations and creative organisations, each nominate two candidates. The Milli Majlis elects one member from each constituency.

Members serve six-year terms, may serve no more than two consecutive terms and elect the Council chair from among themselves. Council membership is incompatible with employment in state or municipal bodies, broadcasting companies and advertising agencies. Members, the Director General and the deputy directors may not belong to a political party, and members may be removed early only on statutory grounds.

These are meaningful procedural safeguards, although they do not create an appointing authority independent of the state: every Council member is ultimately elected by the Milli Majlis. International election observers have repeatedly described Azerbaijan’s political environment as lacking genuine pluralism, which limits the practical independence that parliamentary selection can provide.

Teymur Kərimli currently chairs the Council, succeeding Muxtar Imanov in July 2023. The company’s current Council page lists nine members.

The Council elects and may dismiss the Director General, approves programming strategy and the budget, conducts post-broadcast monitoring, and approves the annual report. The law expressly prohibits it from interfering in the Director General’s day-to-day operations. The Director General serves a four-year term and has statutory authority over programme production, scheduling, staffing and expenditure within the approved budget.

Balakishi Gasimov was first elected Director General on 1 June 2018 and re-elected in 2022. On 25 May 2026, following an application process administered by the then Audiovisual Council, candidates presented their programmes and answered questions from Broadcasting Council members. Gasimov was elected by direct and secret ballot for a further four-year term.

The Broadcasting Council should not be confused with Azerbaijan’s external media regulator. In August 2026 the Media Development Agency was abolished and its functions transferred to a new Media and Broadcasting Council, which also became the legal successor to the Audiovisual Council. The President appointed the new regulator’s chairman and six members on 8 September 2026. This restructuring consolidated sectoral regulation under a presidentially appointed body but did not alter İTV’s internal statutory governance arrangements.

Source of funding and budget

İTV is financed principally from the state budget, supplemented by advertising, sponsorship and other permitted income.

Article 23 of the Public Broadcasting Law permits income from subscription fees, sponsorship, donations, advertising, programme sales, events and other lawful sources. It also provides for a separate annual state-budget allocation, which must take account of the broadcaster’s other income and may not be used as a basis for government interference.

The law contemplated the introduction of a television subscription fee from January 2010. State Media Monitor found no evidence that the fee was implemented. Direct budget financing consequently remains central.

İTV received an allocation of AZN 21.626 million in 2024. The approved 2026 budget breakdown provides AZN 21.7 million, separately identified from the allocations to AzTV, AZERTAC and the media regulatory bodies.

Additional public funding has occasionally been provided for broadcasting rights. A 2023 presidential order allocated funds for İTV’s acquisition of UEFA Euro 2024 rights.

The law requires the Broadcasting Council to report publicly once a year, and İTV has published notices recording the presentation of annual activity and financial reports to the Council. State Media Monitor could not identify the full 2025 public report, current audited financial statements or a breakdown between state funding, advertising, sponsorship and other revenue.

Editorial independence

İTV’s governing law contains substantial formal safeguards. It requires independence from outside interference and identifies impartiality, objectivity, reliability, political pluralism, tolerance and distance from overt political interests as public-broadcasting principles. It also protects the Director General’s authority over programming and bars the Council from interfering in daily operations.

Evidence of editorial practice is nevertheless concerning. Journalists interviewed by State Media Monitor in March 2023 and January 2024 described output heavily aligned with official narratives and centred on the presidency.

OSCE/ODIHR monitoring of the February 2024 presidential election provides a more nuanced finding. İTV offered ten one-hour prime-time roundtables and nine radio programmes and served as the principal broadcast platform for candidate discussion. Observers also found that İTV made some effort to limit disproportionate coverage of the incumbent compared with other broadcasters. Across the wider media environment, however, critical coverage of the incumbent and Government was almost entirely absent. The OSCE/ODIHR final report recommended that public-broadcasting management be appointed by a body independent of government.

Monitoring of the September 2024 parliamentary election found that İTV’s prime-time news remained dominated by state institutions. Between 9 and 30 August, the President received approximately 42 per cent of its monitored political news coverage, the Government 26 per cent and the Central Election Commission 23 per cent. The restrictive legal conditions for election airtime also limited meaningful campaign coverage: only the ruling New Azerbaijan Party qualified for free airtime and it declined to use it. These circumstances should be distinguished from editorial choice, but the resulting coverage provided little political pluralism.

The historical allegation that İTV repurposed AzTV material under its own logo may be retained in the underlying research record, but evidence from 2017 should not carry the current classification rationale when more recent election monitoring is available.

Articles 5 and 6 of Azerbaijan’s Law on Media additionally declare the media free, prohibit state censorship and unlawful interference, recognise creative and editorial independence and protect journalists’ right to independence. These guarantees coexist with extensive regulatory restrictions and have not secured a pluralistic national broadcasting environment.

AI and digital policy

State Media Monitor could not identify a published İTV policy governing generative artificial intelligence, mandatory human verification, model provenance or audience disclosure, and could not establish the extent to which AI is used in production.

Azerbaijan adopted an Artificial Intelligence Strategy for 2025 to 2028 through Presidential Decree No. 530 of 19 March 2025.

Law No. 387-VIIQD of 21 April 2026 added Article 13-2.7 to the Law on Information, Informatization and Protection of Information. It requires publicly displayed photographs, video and audio produced using artificial intelligence to carry a clear and easily visible indication that AI was used. Companion legislation introduced an administrative fine of AZN 80 to AZN 150 for knowingly disseminating such material without the required label.

The provisions cover AI-generated visual and audio material. They do not establish a general requirement to label every text or every journalistic item merely assisted by artificial intelligence.

Classification rationale

İTV remains classified State-Controlled Media (SC), although its formal governance arrangements are materially more independent than those of AzTV.

It is state-established and publicly governed through a parliament-mediated structure. İTV is a statutory public-service legal entity with its own protected property, rather than an ordinary state-owned company. Its nine-member Broadcasting Council is elected by the Milli Majlis from candidates nominated by specified social and professional constituencies. Fixed terms, incompatibility rules, limited removal grounds, an elected Council chair and a competitive appointment process for the Director General are genuine safeguards.

They do not fully insulate governance from political control. The legislature makes every final Council appointment in a political environment lacking effective pluralism, and the external media regulator is presidentially appointed. The state-governance finding therefore rests on the practical appointment environment, not on direct presidential appointment of İTV’s management.

It is predominantly state-funded. The subscription-fee model contemplated by the founding law has not been implemented, and İTV received a direct allocation of AZN 21.7 million for 2026. Advertising, sponsorship and other income are permitted, but their scale was not established. Full current accounts are needed to quantify the state share precisely.

Its editorial agenda is substantially aligned with the state. Interview evidence describes output centred on official narratives, while OSCE/ODIHR monitoring found the President and Government dominating İTV’s parliamentary-election news. İTV also provided structured presidential-election debates and displayed some practices more consistent with public service than those of AzTV. The editorial finding is therefore expressed as substantial government alignment rather than an absolute absence of all public-service practice.

September 2026